Huachuca Astronomy Club

03/20/2026

That bright "star" in the early evening sky is a planet: Venus!

03/06/2026

Tonight is our club's monthly meeting!

Our guest speaker is Christopher Craney of the Vatican Observatory on Mount Graham International Observatory, outside of Safford, AZ. ( https://www.vaticanobservatory.org ). His talk will be about: "Weird Binary Stars Under Close Surveillance: TU Tau and HD 5501"
A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other.

Meeting time: 7 pm March 6, 2026
Location: 913 Colombo Ave, Sierra Vista, AZ
Admission is FREE

03/02/2026

Yes, there is going to be a lunar eclipse very, very early Tuesday morning (March 3rd) !
In case you missed this article by one of our experienced board members, here it is!

02/03/2026

This is one of the largest sunspots observed since 1859 is on the Sun right now! The whole image of the Sun (see photo) gives you an idea of just how large it is!

A few days ago, this sunspot 4366 didn't exist. Now it is a behemoth almost half the size of the great Carrington sunspot. Rapid growth is making the sunspot unstable. Indeed, it has already unleashed dozens of solar flares in the past 24 hours, including a powerful X8-class flare.

This enormous dark spot (upper left) more than ten times wider than Earth! This sunspot is just getting started. It has an increasingly unstable delta-class magnetic field, and it is rapidly adding new intermediary spots. More X-flares and CME’s are likely in the days ahead…. Source: SpaceWeather.com

The Carrington Sunspot Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking on 1–2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally and caused sparking and even fires in telegraph stations The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth's magnetosphere. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

This was imaged by one of our club members with a Meade LX200GPS 8” SCT telescope with a PointGrey monochrome camera.
The image is a 30 sec video capture (5,000 frames in black&white) of which only about 5% of the best frames was used.

WARNING! Do NOT look at the Sun to see this unless you have certified solar glasses! Otherwise permanent damage to your vision with result... and that is NOT good. And do NOT use binoculars or ordinary telescopes to try to view it.

01/30/2026

THIS RED ARC IS NOT AN AURORA: During last week's severe geomagnetic storm, red auroras danced across the skies of Europe. This red arc, however, was not one of them:
"This is an SAR arc," says Andreas Graw, who photographed the phenomenon on Jan. 20th from Lower Saxony, Germany.
SAR arcs were discovered in 1956 at the beginning of the Space Age. Researchers didn’t know what they were and unwittingly gave them a misleading name: "Stable Auroral Red arcs" or SAR arcs. In fact, SAR arcs are neither stable nor auroras.
Auroras appear when charged particles rain down from space, hitting the atmosphere and causing it to glow. SAR arcs form differently. They come from Earth's ring current system.
Earth is surrounded by a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet. Think Saturn's rings--except made of electricity. During geomagnetic storms, heat from the ring current leaks into the upper atmosphere and causes it to glow. - Source: spaceweather.com. Jan. 30, 2026

01/24/2026

AL LIVE
January 30, 2026
7 pm EST
Keynote speaker William Gottemoller “New Challenges to Our Model of the Universe.”
Also, Gordon Baustian and Chris Kardos of the Cedar Amateur Astronomers will discuss the upcoming “Cosmic Conference” on May 15-17 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Join Terry Mann, Chuck Allen, Don Knabb, Bryan Simpson, Scott Roberts and David Levy for this evening of astronomy!
Access links will be given when the date nears.

01/24/2026

01/24/2026

Citizen Science Programs
through the Astronomical League

The Astronomical League believes that the role that citizens can play in furthering scientific knowledge is significant. Many organizations have developed opportunities for each of us to contribute and the Astronomical League wants to encourage everyone to take advantages of this. There is indeed something for everyone regardless of their expertise or experience.
Level 1 : Projects requiring only passive participation.
These projects need help analyzing vast quantities of data. Typically they would use your computer when it is not actively doing work for you. They analyze packets of data and report their findings to the group doing the research. Examples include: SETI@Home and Einstein@Home.

Level 2 : Projects requiring active participation without direct observations.
Many projects need your eyes and brain to help analyze vast amounts of data. They often involve the categorization of objects. The list changes frequently as new opportunities arise and as older opportunities retire.

Level 3: Projects requiring direct observations.
These projects require the participants to make observations, perform some preliminary analysis, and to submit their results to a national or international database. New ones will be offered as new opportunities are identified. We hope you will try some of these Observing programs as your observational prowess develops.

For complete details ...
https://www.astroleague.org/citizen-science-special-program/

01/24/2026

Check out today's SpceWeather:

https://spaceweather.com/

01/12/2026

Supporting all things astronomical !

01/07/2026

Here's your lunar calendar for January !

12/31/2025

It's time for our club's monthly meeting that is open to the public: this Friday, January 2nd (2026) starting at 7 pm at Cochise College Downtown - 2600 E Wilcox Dr, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635
You are invited !

Our special guest speaker is Michael Borland. The topic will be: Narrow-band solar imaging.

With the sun still close to maximum activity for the present cycle, now is a golden time to perform solar imaging. Narrow-band techniques provide the ability to image solar flares, prominences, filaments, and other features not accessible to white-light imaging. He discuss two narrow-band techniques, namely, use of etalons and use of a spectroheliograph, including the principles of operation for each, the difficulties encountered with each method and how we’ve attempted to address those. He also describe use of automation to allow nearly unattended operation for many hours of data collection, as well as techniques for dealing with the flood of data this produces.

Michael Borland received a B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph. D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University, specializing in high-energy particle accelerators. Sadly, in all those years of study he only took one year of Astronomy, in spite of being interested in the subject from an early age. In 2019, inspired by a coworker, he took up astrophotography as a hobby. In 2022, in search of darker skies and a warmer climate, he moved with his very understanding wife Shirley to Benson, where they live with their cats Darwin and Kepler, along with an increasingly embarrassing amount of astronomy gear.